


Found In Translation

by jessalae



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Spells & Enchantments, Study Date
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:48:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28484145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessalae/pseuds/jessalae
Summary: Eliot shrugged. “Honestly, magic can be weird. It might just mean what you originally thought it meant.”
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 9
Kudos: 64
Collections: Peaches and Plums Stockings 2020





	Found In Translation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mizzy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mizzy/gifts).



> Thank you to Sylph for betaing!

“This can’t— this can’t be, like. This has to be a typo, right?”

“A typo? In a handwritten twelfth-century manuscript?” Eliot raised an eyebrow at Quentin, who sat cross-legged on the foot of Eliot’s bed, bent nearly in half over said manuscript.

“A _typographical error_ ,” Quentin said irritably. “A copying mistake, or something.”

“Why, what does it say?”

Quentin tucked his hair behind his ears and frowned at the text. “ _Havyng thanne said thos worddis, ye nede thanne complete the spel by the lighte of a first kisse._ ” He looked up, frowning at Eliot, now. “Maybe this is like, one of the words that’s closer to Old English than Modern?”

“Could be,” Eliot said. Unlikely, but— it _could_ be. Or, possibly, this study session could be about to get very interesting.

“I left my Middle English dictionary down in my room, can I use yours?”

“Quentin,” Eliot said gently. “Do you really think I own a Middle English dictionary?”

“It was on that list of things we were all supposed to buy for PA…” Quentin’s protest trailed off at Eliot’s smirk. “So, no, I guess— yeah, no.” He set the book carefully aside and groaned as he pushed himself to his feet. “Be right back.”

Eliot turned back to his contraband laptop and clicked through a few more slides on the _Best Looks From Men’s Paris Fashion Week 2015_ photo roundup he’d been perusing while Quentin worked. This was how their “study sessions” usually went: Quentin actually doing homework or research or some other charmingly nerdy pursuit, sprawled out on Eliot’s thick Persian rug or curled up on the end of his bed like a particularly anxious cat; Eliot doing whatever he felt like, which occasionally included some light homework and more often involved browsing the internet, and helping every once in a while when Quentin couldn’t get his stubby little fingers into the right tuts for something. When Margo was around, there tended to be more conversation, but she’d had the audacity to book herself a mani-pedi _without Eliot_ today, so she was off in L.A. getting her feet massaged with Julianna Margulies’s favorite lotion or something. The afternoon had been quiet, mostly, the only sounds the hum of Eliot’s laptop, Quentin’s little murmurs as he sounded out unfamiliar words, the soft clink of their wine glasses on the bedside table.

“ _Oh_ kay,” Quentin said when he returned, settling down back in his spot with a fat book in his hand. “Kisse.” He flipped pages. Eliot watched him out of the corner of his eye, pretending to still be absorbed in his own work.

After a moment and some frustrated flipping sounds, Quentin sighed. “It’s gotta have some other meaning,” he said. “It doesn’t— it doesn’t make any _sense_. The light of a first kiss? That’s not, that’s not a thing. Maybe it means like, the first kiss of dawn’s light on the sky? Like a timing thing?”

“Could be,” Eliot said again. “Are there any other instructions about time of day?”

Quentin’s eyes skimmed over the page again. “No,” he said slowly. “Or— shit, yeah, it says _before the sun sets_. So that _really_ doesn’t make sense.”

“So it’s not timing.” Eliot shrugged. “Honestly, magic can be weird. It might just mean what you originally thought it meant.”

“Yeah,” Quentin said, rubbing his forehead. “Although I still don’t know about the light part. It doesn’t mention candles, or anything.” He sighed deeply and pressed the heel of his hand to one eye. “I guess I’m just not turning in this assignment, then. Fuck. Why— _why_ did I have to pick _this_ page to write about—”

“Why _did_ you pick this page?” Eliot asked.

Quentin looked up at him, then looked sheepish, his mouth twitching into that tight little smile he wore when he was too anxious to smile properly. “I liked the illustration,” he muttered.

Eliot closed his laptop and shifted on the bed, moving closer to Quentin so he could look over his shoulder. The illustration was rather pretty, a cluster of little flowers drawn in brilliant blue and purple ink. Human figures stood on either side of it, holding hands above the flower. They were awkwardly shaped in that I’m-a-medieval-monk-how-does-anatomy-work kind of way, but it was pretty clear from the picture that they were looking at each other, not at the plant they just grew.

“I was really tired after the party on Thursday, so I didn’t actually really… _read_ the spell before I chose, I just, I told Professor Sunderland I’d do this one, and she wrote it down, so— maybe I can switch, turn it in late?”

“Or,” Eliot said, “you could do this one.” He glanced out the window. “There’s at least half an hour before the sun sets, you have time to do the math.”

When he looked back from the window, Quentin was frowning at him. “I can’t get one of the key— _ingredients_ , though, or whatever,” he said. “That’s literally what we’ve been talking about the whole time.”

“Of course you can,” Eliot said. “We’ve never kissed before.”

Quentin’s eyes widened, darted furtively down to Eliot’s mouth and back up, then over to the side. “You don’t— that’s like, a little beyond just helping me with my homework,” he said. “You don’t have to.”

“But I can.” Eliot kept his voice and posture carefully casual, fighting the urge to lean in towards Quentin. They needed to save that for the spell, after all. “Your choice, of course. But it seems like the easiest solution. You do the spell, you write your paper, everything’s fine.”

“Um,” Quentin said, then closed his mouth abruptly. His cheeks had started to turn pink, which was just _adorable_. “You’d— you would do that? For me?”

Eliot laughed. “You’re my friend, and it’s five seconds of my life, Quentin,” he said. “It’s one kiss. It’s not like you’re asking me to blow you.”

Quentin visibly startled, his face flushing immediately from pink to red. “Jesus,” he said. “That— is not the comparison _I_ would have made—”

With significant effort, Eliot shifted back to his previous spot and opened his laptop. “Up to you,” he said, “but if you want to try and get this assignment in on time, you should probably start working on the circumstances now, before the sun does set.”

He fixed his eyes firmly on the pirated digital copy of a physics textbook he was reading — telekinesis came as naturally to him as breathing, but apparently for _upper level classes_ he’d have to actually _show his work_ and do the math. He was taking a sip of his wine when he heard the telltale sound of pages turning in a notebook, the scratch of a pencil on paper. This study session was, in fact, going to be far more interesting than usual.

The diagrams and formulas he was looking at drifted across his vision and directly out of his head. He’d have to reread this chapter sometime later. He kept his eyes on the screen, though, sipping perhaps a bit more frequently at his wine than he usually did. Not that he _needed_ liquid courage for anything. Like he’d said, it was five seconds of his life.

“Um, so,” Quentin said after a little while. Eliot looked up: he’d torn a page out of his notebook and was inspecting it as he tucked his hair back behind one ear. “I think, this is— can you tell me if this looks right?”

Eliot took the paper and checked Quentin’s work. “It looks perfect,” he said. 

“Cool,” Quentin said, tearing another page out of his notebook, this one with the diagram and the runes of the spell already written on it. He shifted himself to face Eliot and set it between them, frowning fiercely at it, not meeting Eliot’s eyes as he took his page of calculations back. “I still don’t know about the whole, like, _light_ thing, but.” He sighed, then seemed to steel himself, and looked intensely at Eliot. “If this doesn’t actually work, I, uh— sorry. Apologies in advance. It might not work.”

“That’s magic for you,” Eliot said, much more breezily than he felt. “I should point out, though, that you should be careful to do everything else right.”

Quentin’s frown deepened. “Why?”

“Because, if it has to be a _first_ kiss, we only get one try.”

Quentin’s lips parted a little, his tongue darting out to wet them, and he nodded. “Yeah. Right. Okay, um.”

Eliot scooted up so their knees were nearly touching and held out his hands. “If there aren’t tuts involved, we should probably do it just like the illustration shows,” he says. “These old manuscripts, half the time they hide some key step in the pictures instead of writing it out.”

“Yeah,” Quentin said again. He took a deep breath and laid his hands on top of Eliot’s upturned palms. They were square and solid, and his palms were a little bit sweaty. Eliot wove their fingers together like the figures in the illustration.

“Whenever you’re ready,” he said. “You’re the one casting. I’m just here to provide the secret ingredient.”

Quentin’s face twitched into another nervous smile. Then he cleared his throat and looked down at the paper between them.

He carefully read through the words of the incantation, the Middle English fluid on his tongue. Eliot watched his lips move, fascinated. And then the speaking part of the spell was over, and Quentin looked Eliot in the eye, seeming kind of unsure what to do.

Before the half-completed spell could fade out of the air and make them start this whole process over again, Eliot tightened his fingers on Quentin’s hands and leaned forward, pressing their lips together.

Quentin made a little noise from deep in his throat — surprise, maybe — and leaned into it, holding Eliot’s hands tight. After a moment he tilted his head to the side a little, his soft lips moving just a bit under Eliot’s, keeping the kiss going. Eliot followed his lead, didn’t put too much pressure on it, just held their mouths sweetly together. For one wild second, he thought that Quentin might open his mouth, let his tongue slip out to taste Eliot — but no, the spell didn’t need that, there was no reason he would.

They both felt the kiss coming to a natural end and drew back at more or less the same time. Eliot let his eyes flutter open — when had he closed them? — and saw Quentin looking at him with huge brown eyes, mouth slightly open.

Eliot felt like he should say something, though _what_ he was going to say, he had absolutely no idea. The words died on his tongue, though, as a soft sphere of golden light blossomed and grew in the air between them, in the place where their lips had met. Quentin let out a quiet gasp. The sphere of light floated downward gently, like a dandelion seed on the wind, and when it touched the paper below them it splashed out like a drop of water, streams of light shimmering along the lines of the sigils Quentin had drawn. Eliot blinked and blinked again, watching transfixed as a green stem sprouted up out of the center of the design and kept growing, branching and twirling and opening until a cluster of small purple flowers sat between them.

They stared at the result of the spell for a moment. Eliot’s lips were tingling, maybe an aftereffect, maybe not. “So,” he said. “Do you usually manifest a ball of glowing energy when you kiss someone?”

Quentin let out a startled laugh. “No. Or uh, never before.” The blush staining his cheeks darkened a little. “Guess it’s been a while since I tried, but. No.”

“Me neither,” Eliot said. “Well,” he continued, trying to draw his heart back into his chest from wherever it had unexpectedly fluttered off to, “you can write your paper, now. You can even put that in a cup of water, bring it in to see if that gets you in Sunderland’s good graces. It won’t, she’s a drill sergeant, but you can try.”

Quentin picked up the piece of paper carefully, holding it above his face so he could marvel at the slim white roots growing down through the paper. “I might just bring it in so she sees I actually did something right for once,” he said. He looked up at Eliot. “Thank you.” His voice was so heartfelt Eliot almost shivered.

“As I said, five seconds of my life,” he said nonchalantly. Quentin nodded, mouth back in that tight smile, and scooted back to grab his notebook and start on the rest of his assignment. Eliot settled back against his pillows, tapped a few keys to wake up his computer.

“Not at all an unpleasant five seconds, I might add,” he suddenly added, surprising even himself.

He glanced up: Quentin’s tight smile had widened just a bit, one corner of his mouth twitching up towards something bigger. “Yeah, um. Not for me either,” Quentin said, then bent his head over his notebook, tucking his hair behind his ears and picking up his pencil.

Eliot didn’t manage to retain much of the information he read for the rest of the evening, but he could live with that. This study session had been— enlightening in other ways. Perhaps good ways. He wasn’t quite sure yet.

It was going to require some further study.


End file.
